Why am I not dead? How am I still here? Talking...moving, each breath escaping smoother and smoother, flowing over my lips with growing ease.
His gleaming gaze travels my face, hungry, desperate...but without hope. I’m dead. I read that grim knowledge on his face. Until he looks down. Shock passes over his features and wipes free the hopelessness.
“Arden?” he gasps, quickly fumbling with my ripped tunic, seeking and finding my flesh, fingers slipping past the shredded fabric and touching me where the icicle penetrated my body. Except there’s no gaping hole. No mortal wound. No jagged, ripped skin and exposed tissue. Only perfectly healthy skin, slippery with red and purple blood.
Redandpurple.
Myblood.
Tage’sblood.
Tage’s glimmering purple blood...all over me. In me. In my wound. Healing me?
Healing me.
I lift my face and lock gazes with Tage. “Tage?” I whisper. “Where...how?”
Is it possible?
Could Tage’s blood have fixed me? Could dragon blood have saved me? Clearly, from the look on his face, he had not known this was possible, and in that moment, I remember the harpies’ words:These new ones know nothing. They’re still learning what it is they are. They’re not like the Old Ones.
He does a rough mix of shaking and nodding his head, his teeth flashing as he laughs. “You’re good. You’re alive!” The words escape him in a spirited rush. As though he needs to hear this beyond just seeing the evidence of it.
His hand flattens over my chest where the wound once markedme for death. My heart beats fast and strong, rising up to meet the press of his hand.
“Tage,” I get out.
“Arden,” he returns fiercely. “We’re good.” He lowers his head to kiss me, and at this last utterance, I feel the conviction, the truth, of those words on his lips. I believe them.
In them...I taste forever.
Epilogue
The Borg
One year later...
The Borg is raucous tonight.
I suspect it is this way every night. Revelry and music and laughter spill from doors and open windows. It is a city that never sleeps. A place where life knows no rest. No silence. No fire ever banked.
There may be habitual unrest in the kingdom, but here you would not know it. Here, people are living every moment to the fullest. I glance over at Tage and feel a familiar flutter in my stomach. I can understand that.
Life is precarious. The only way to face it is to choose life. To choose joy. Choose love.
At the top of the city sits the hulking gated fortress, the sprawling home of the Lord and Lady of the Borderlands. The King and Queen of the Borderlands as everyone in the north refers to them, no longer recognizing King Hamlin in the south as their legitimate ruler.
Tage returns to my side after finishing his conversation with a peddler.
The man moves on, pocketing the coin Tage gave him and pushing his cart down the cobbled street.
Tage smiles encouragingly. “This way.”
With a hand at the small of my back, he guides me through thestreets of the bustling city, following the directions acquired by the peddler.
I am trembling with nerves and excitement as we walk, my cloak swishing at my boots.
Tage’s hand slides from my back to take my hand. His fingers lace with mine in a solid grip.
